I have not used DNN for about 4 years and would just like to start over with DNN 6.0. I've subscribed (i.e., paid) and see that there are a great number of video tutorials. Assuming I've forgotten everything I ever knew about DNN and knowing that I want to start with DNN 6.0, what would be the best set of videos to start with?

I've been creating websites with Microsoft MVC 2 for a year or so and have created others in the past with Microsoft Web Forms. I have done all of my websites with C# and am quite familiar with C# so the new DNN 6.0 is very appealing to me but I don't know where to begin; thus I'm looking for suggestions.

Thanks,
Bob

Bob,

Welcome back!

I would start by reviewing the Beginner's tutorials. For DotNetNuke 6, you will also find some introductory videos at the DotNetNuke.com site. You might also want to consider the Web Platform Installerfor an initial installation.

For the most part, the fact that DotNetNuke is written in c# shouldn't have much of a bearing. You can build quite impressive websites using only DotNetNuke and a few of the furnished modules. When you do install a version, look over the default website that is built. It uses ONLY the Text/HTML module! Most of the customization can be done with CSS and some occasional jQuery.

And, be sure to ask any questions that you might have here.

Great. Well I must say that the installation was quite straight forward. I actually installed directly onto my Windows 2008 standard server rather than on a localhost and only had a minor problem and that was due to the fact that my SQL database was on another server and caused the script installs to take too much time. But it all came together very nicely. And I decided to use the SQL express on my server so things are faster now. I even tried re-installing just to see how it went, and it was a flawless install.

I really like the new look; I don't have perfect memory recall, but it sure seems a lot more natural now.

Now I'm ready to go review the beginner's tutorials.
Thanks,
Bob

Just remember that almost all of the tutorials refer to older versions of DotNetNuke. The concepts are exactly the same, but you will find the look and feel different in 6, and you may find features in 6 that are not present in earlier versions.

There are some videos at DotNetNuke.com that are specific to DotNetNuke 6.

I am having a difficult time looking at the beginner videos and trying to create the simplest of websties. Will there be any video coming out to show how to use the new DNN 6 GUI to build a simple web site? I understand that the principals are the same, but I don't have a lot of time to spend trying to figure out how the two methods are connected. I have to get a couple of new websites up and running in the next week or so and they are pretty simple sites. I can throw them together with Microsoft MVC and Visual Studio in no time at all, but they are not CMS and I'd really like to use the DotNetNuke to build up some simple sites. It seems to me that other people coming into DNN as new users might be much more troubled than me. It shouldn't take too long to make a tutorial that would at least go through the process of starging with the default website that gets installed and adding a home page, an about page and maybe one additional page using one of the modules. If I have to figure it all all by myself without the help of a tutorial, I'll be more than happy to put one together for everyone else, but that might be awhile and if I can't figure it out fast enough then I'll likely drop the ball.

So, I'm hoping someone somewhere has such a tutorial already. It may be that one exists somewhere on this site. I'd love to view it.

Bob

Seriously, nothing really has changed so all of the previous tutorials are appropriate. What has changed is:

1. Administration is simpler (greatly simpler and much more intuitive).
2. The default skin is a whole lot nicer.


If you have the default installation running, this is what I would do.

1. Delete every page except Home (go to a page, mouse over "Pages" in the control panel and select Delete).
2. On the remaining Home page, delete all of the modules (mouse over the Manage button for each module and click Delete).

At this point, you have a website with an empty Home page. Now you can add modules and pages.

3. To add a new page, mouse over Pages in the control panel and click Add. All that you really need to do at this point is give the page a name. There are lots of options, though, including to make the new page a child of a Parent page.

4. To add content to a page, mouse over Modules in the control panel, check the radio button to add a new module and choose your module. For starters, add the HTML module.

5. To add content to an HTML module, mouse over its Manage button and click Edit Content. If you think that the HTML module isn't sufficient, note that then entire starter website is constructed ONLY of the HTML module.

There's certainly much more, but that will get you a basic site up and running. And, if you want to know more about DotNetNuke, I recommend the book by Chris Hammond and Patrick Renner. Sure, it's all about v5 of DotNetNuke but, as I said, the concepts are all the same That and our tutorials should be quite sufficient. And, we will have tutorials related to aspects of v6 coming up.

OK.
Well, I think I'm getting the hang of it. Turns out there is a page on that default site called Getting Started and for some reason (well, I really only see out of one eye) I didn't see the video right there in front of me! When I played it, I was relieved to see that it had almost exactly what I was looking for and with that I was able to start creating some pages - and yes, I used only the HTML module.

Now I need to figure out how to change the skinning as I have some particular CSS that I have been using with my MVC that I'd like to continue to use. I do recall that years ago I watched your skinning tutorials and figured out how to work with them so I'll ge looking into that again.

Thanks for your help. Sometimes I need a push!

Bob

Great!

For skinning, I would recommend making a copy of DarkKnight and renaming it. Then you can edit the skin.css file that comes with it to adjust the site styles. For specific styling, you can edit portal.css. You can get to that one using the StyleSheet Editor from the Admin, Site Settings page.

I like to use browser tools to play with styles and them copy them to skin.css and portal.css when I get things working the way I want. IE and Chrome have built-in tools. For FireFox I like Firebug and Web Developers' Toolbar. See our Troubshooting DotNetNuke Skins tutorial for some tips.